My Genealogy Hound

J. W. MOFFITT.
Fifty-four years have come and gone since J. W. Moffitt took up his residence in Union county, where he now owns a farm of one hundred acres in Union township, which he now rents, having recently accepted the position of road superintendent and removed to Afton. He was less than a year old at the time of his arrival here. He was born in Randolph county, North Carolina, August 22, 1852, his parents being Stancil and Deborah (Barker) Moffitt, who were likewise natives of North Carolina. They came to Iowa the year following our subject’s birth, reaching their destination on the 18th of November after driving across the country in the primitive manner of travel in those days before the era of railroad building. The father, who was a farmer by occupation, secured a tract of wild land on section 1, Union township, and began breaking the sod preparatory to transforming the prairie into a fine farm. He lived there for many years, successfully carrying on general agricultural pursuits and now makes his home with his son, J. W. Moffitt, at the age of eighty-four years. His wife passed away in December, 1906, at the age of eighty-two years. They were the parents of six sons and three daughters, seven of whom reached adult age.

J. W. Moffitt was reared on the old homestead farm amid the wild scenes and environments of pioneer life, sharing with the family in all of the hardships and trials incident to the settlement of the frontier. The common schools afforded him his educational privileges and he received ample training in the work of the fields. To his father he gave the benefit of his services until twenty-two years of age, after which he went to Afton, where for four years he was employed in an implement business. He next learned the carpenter’s trade, at which he spent two years, and then returned to the farm on section 1, having previously purchased one hundred and sixty acres of land. This he improved and brought under a high state of cultivation but later sold that property and bought sixty acres on section 12, Union township to which he later added forty acres on section 11. Upon this place he made his home and all of the improvements on the property are monuments to his thrift and enterprise. He built a good residence, also substantial barns and added the latest improved machinery to facilitate the work of the fields. For twelve years he continuously carried on carpentering in addition to his farming and he successfully raised stock, making a specialty of Chester White hogs.

On the 12th of April, 1885, Mr. Moffitt was married in Union township to Miss Emma C. Craig, a daughter of W. F. Craig, county auditor. They have two sons and a daughter: Clarence, who is attending school in Shenandoah, Iowa; Anna, a teacher of elocution and physical culture at LaGrand College and formerly for several terms a teacher in this county after her graduation from the Western Normal College of Shenandoah; and Howard at home.

Mr. Moffitt exercises his right of franchise in support of the men and measures of the republican party where state and national questions are involved but regards only the capability of the candidate at local elections. He has been township assessor for two terms, has been president of the township school board for twelve years and road supervisor for eleven years, yet he has never been an office seeker and it has only been in response to the wishes of his fellow townsmen that he has consented to fill office. He belongs to the Christian church of Pleasant Ridge, in which he served as an officer for several years and in the work of the church he is deeply and helpfully interested.

In his business career all days have not been equally bright but he has persevered and by unfaltering industry and strict business integrity he has worked his way upward and is now comfortably situated. For more than a half a century he has lived in the county, which had few evidences of modern civilization when the family arrived in 1853. Farm work was carried on with machinery that today would seem very crude and much arduous labor was required to break the sod and till the fields. It needed constant vigilance on the part of the farmers to keep out the weeds and it was often times at the cost of earnest, self-denying labor that the prairies were converted into a cultivated tract of land that brought forth rich crops. Mr. Moffitt has experienced all of the hardships and trials of pioneer life and can relate many interesting incidents of the early days. It is good that he has lived to see modern development and to enjoy now the fruits of his labor in a comfortable home.